


Green-eyed

by themantlingdark



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-13 20:16:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16899180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themantlingdark/pseuds/themantlingdark
Summary: Thor and Steve grow close. Loki gets jealous. High school au.





	Green-eyed

For thorduna 

 

Locker assignments are alphabetical, so Thor Odinson and Steven Rogers were neighbors of a sort all through middle school and are side by side again as they begin high school. They have little in common beyond their indomitable senses of decency. Still, it’s always been enough for them, and they look forward to seeing each other between classes.

Thor is growing tall and strong. Steven is not. Thor goes out for football and makes quarterback as a freshman. Steve’s doctor sends a note excusing--Steve will frown and say “barring”--him from participating in sports and gym class.

Thor watches Steve fall in love with art and sees his ever-improving efforts filling the display cabinets in the halls. Steve watches Thor’s shoulders get bigger and his chest broaden and his patience stretch and his kindness deepen. Loki watches both of them from a body that has grown tall like Thor’s but remained slender like Steve’s.

Steve spends every penny from his paper route on art supplies, which he carries around in a sturdy old steel tackle box that was his father’s. The box itself makes Thor think of an old car: covered in teal metallic paint, chipped and rusty at the edges. Thor suspects it weighs five pounds empty, and he knows it is anything but. It’s full of huge tubes of oil paint and and tins of turpentine. It’s too big to fit in Steve’s locker and it’s too valuable to leave behind in the art room, so Steve lugs it with him to every class, shifting it from his right hand to his left and then back again as his fingers get tired.

There’s an unseasonably cold spell in early October of their junior year. Thor hears Steve’s teeth chattering next to him as they spin through the combinations of their locks before first period. Thor is about to open his locker door when he feels a blow to the top of his right foot. Steve’s tackle box slipped from his numb fingers, bounced off of Thor’s toes, and landed with a clatter on the green linoleum floor.

Thor bends to examine the box and finds no fresh dents or paint chips on the floor. He picks it up and offers it to Steve, but Steve is gaping. When Thor looks around, the whole student body is silently staring, worried about Thor’s foot.

“Sorry,” Thor says, and Steve looks confused.

“Did I break anything?” Steve breathes.

Thor lifts his left knee to make a table of his thigh, props the tackle box on it, and opens it up to see if its contents survived the fall. It was an eighteen inch drop at most, so Thor isn’t too worried.

“I mean your foot,” Steve says. “Your toes? Your metatarsals?”

“Oh,” Thor laughs. “No, they’re fine. And your paint’s okay, too.”

Steve’s face still looks pale as he takes the box and walks to class.

“Come on. We’ll be late,” Loki says, waiting on Thor’s left and wondering whether his brother’s toes are as “fine” as Thor claims.

At lunch, Thor finds Steve and slides into the open seat at his left, saying “hi” to Steve and Bucky and setting down his lunch. Loki takes the seat to Thor’s left.

“You have art first period?” Thor asks.

“First and second,” Steve says. “Since I can’t take gym, they always let me double up on art classes.”

“Sweet,” Thor says, and Steve nods.

Thor takes out his wallet and pulls a key from one of the pockets, then slides it over to Steve.

“What’s that for?” Steve asks.

“It’s my spare car key. You can use the trunk like a locker. Keep your art supplies in there. You live north of here, right?”

“I...  Yeah,” Steve says.

“Perfect. You’re riding with me,” Thor says, and takes an enormous bite of his sandwich.

Steve doesn’t argue. Bucky makes a mental note to try announcing things to Steve and then rendering himself incapable of speech by putting food in his mouth rather than asking Steve to do sensible things. He doubts he’ll have as much luck as Thor, as he lacks the aura of imperviousness Thor possesses--and Steve already knows he's a pushover--but he figures he has nothing to lose.

Thor starts driving Steve to school in the mornings. Steve lives so close to the school it’s considered walking distance, so the bus doesn’t stop near him. It wouldn’t be a problem if Steve weren’t hauling thirty pounds of paint with him every day. When Thor doesn’t have a game or practice, he drives Steve home. Otherwise, Steve walks home and Thor drops off the art supplies when he’s finished with football. Loki begins to take the bus.

The first time Loki sees Steve in their house, Steve is facing away from him, and Loki initially wonders if Thor is tutoring a middle schooler in math. Then he recognizes Steve’s voice and sees that their textbooks are closed. Not studying. They’re just eating sandwiches and talking at the kitchen table. Their chairs are aimed slightly toward each other and they’re both leaning back, getting bread crumbs all down their fronts. Loki fixes himself a pb&j and sits down beside Thor to listen to their conversation. Health-talk. Exercise. Pilates and weightlifting. Essentially, Thor will be tutoring Steve in gym, so Loki’s original impression of the situation isn’t as far from the mark as he thought. It sounds harmless and dull, so Loki heads up to his room to read.

When Loki comes out to get himself a glass of water, he finds Thor and Steve in the doorway to Thor’s room. Thor has a pull-up bar that he clamps to the frame and it’s fixed in place. He has his hands on Steve’s waist and he’s lifting Steve up as Steve pulls as much of his own weight as he can manage. Loki stares at the curve of Thor’s spine. At the way it’s arched, throwing Thor’s hips forward and his shoulders back to balance the weight of Steve’s body held in front of Thor’s chest. Loki watches the easy sway of them. Steve, rising and falling. Thor, saying “Perfect, just like that” and then “keep going until it starts to hurt.” Steve’s breathing, slightly strained and timed with each lift, and the back of his t-shirt hanging loose behind him, dragging against Thor’s front.

Loki takes the hall in four strides, takes the stairs three at a time, and takes off out the back door in his stocking feet, feeling the brittle leaves of dormant grass crushed flat beneath his soles as he runs. He takes his usual path through the woods at a sprint. The ground is getting hard with the cold weather and without the cushion of his shoes it makes his feet ache. It helps him not to think of Thor. He has a cramp in his right side and he’s getting queasy and all of it is good because none of it is Thor telling Steve that he’s perfect.

After another quarter of a mile taken at full speed, Loki staggers to a halt and vomits into the brush at the edge of the trail. Just stringy yellow foam pouring past his lips. He stands, spitting, for a few minutes, then limps back to the house, rinses his mouth with the Listerine in the guest bathroom, and goes downstairs to nap on the couch so he won’t have to walk past Thor’s door again.

Loki gets used to it. Really, he just avoids it as much as he can. But sometimes he’s careless and drinks too much water and has to leave his room to use the toilet--after giving serious consideration to pissing in his empty cup and pouring it in the toilet after Steve’s gone. At the worst, he hears the soft unintentional grunting Steve makes as he lifts the heavier weights. But he’s never certain until he hears the count or the weight hitting the floor. The breathing is something else until there’s evidence to the contrary.

By Thanksgiving, Steve is sturdier, thought not much taller. Allowed to progress at his own pace, he’s made strides. He’s put on muscle. He doesn’t need Thor to drive him anymore. Doesn’t need to use the trunk of Thor’s car as a locker. But he still does both.

At lunch, Loki sits beside his brother and pretends to read while he listens to the conversation at the table and tries to sort out allegiances; Steve spends his weekday afternoons with Thor and his evenings at Bucky’s house. But Thor brings Steve’s lunch and says “This is what we’re eating today.” The “we” always catches in Loki’s ears and spins through his mind on a loop for hours afterward.

Spring semester means the end of football. Thor is free every afternoon after school gets out. Loki thought that Thor and Steve would work out until four at the latest and then part ways. Instead, Steve still stays until five thirty or six, leaving just before supper. He and Thor stay in Thor’s bedroom with the door closed the entire time. Some days Loki presses his ear to their shared wall until Thor takes Steve home. For the first two hours, he can hear that they’re working out--there’s Thor’s deep voice counting lifts and there’s the heavy clang of dumbbells colliding. But afterward there’s silence for two hours and the door stays shut and Loki doesn’t know what they’re doing in there and whether it would be better or worse if they were doing it loudly.

In February, Loki is at the kitchen table reading when he hears his brother’s bedroom door open and Thor comes downstairs. Thor is wearing only his thin white cotton boxers. They’re on backward. Thor gets ice and stands at the sink, filling two glasses with water, then turns around and leans back against the counter, gulping his drink and staring back at Loki.

“What’s wrong?” Thor asks, when he’s done drinking.

“You put your underwear on the wrong way.”

Thor looks down and then laughs at himself.

“That’s what feels so weird. I’m taking them right off again anyway, though,” Thor shrugs, cheerfully, and Loki feels his face reddening and his eyes getting wet. “Don’t be such a prude,” Thor teases. “Steve’s getting so good. He’s, like, a master. It’s insane.”

Loki listens to Thor’s feet thudding back up the steps while he wills himself to breathe and hopes he can stave off his stomach’s urge to empty itself.

He can’t.

He has to launch himself at the sink. Afterward, he runs the garbage disposal and rinses the basin with bleach, then opens the window and lights a scented candle so that the kitchen won’t stink of vomit all through dinner.

When Thor gets back from dropping Steve off at Bucky’s, he finds Loki waiting for him in his bedroom, sitting at the foot of his bed and staring at his rumpled sheets.

“Hey. What’s up?” Thor asks, but Loki rises to his feet in one swift dart and shoves the center of Thor’s chest as he storms past. Thor isn’t expecting it and nearly goes over backward.

“What the fuck?” Thor shouts, running after his brother to get to him before he locks himself in his room.

Thor slams into the half-shut door and knocks Loki down with the force of it.

“Fuck. Sorry,” Thor sighs, and reaches out a hand to help Loki back up, but Loki bats him away.

“Fuck you,” Loki spits, rolling onto his front and climbing to his feet.

“What the hell did I do?”

“What haven’t you done?” Loki snarls.  “What hasn’t that boy done to you?”

“What?” Thor breathes, wrinkling his forehead and staring at Loki’s red face. “Are you talking about Steve?”

“He doesn’t even know you. I know you never talk. What does he do with that mou-”

“You’ve been listening to us?” Thor asks, and Loki’s teeth click together as he slams his own mouth shut. “What difference does it make what we do?”

“What difference does it make?” Loki repeats, his voice disbelieving and his eyes wide and wet and locked on his brother’s.

Thor stares back. His features are wrinkled up, more with worry now than anger. It makes him look older and sharper and like he’s seeing straight into Loki’s head.

“Get out of my room,” Loki says, pulling his gaze away to stare at the wall over Thor’s right shoulder.

“We talk in the car. If you’d stop being such a dick and ride with us instead of taking the bus every day you’d know that.”

“Why would I want to hear it? It’s bad enough that I have to see you both rushing through your homework for the last half of lunch so that you’ll have more time to fuck later.”

Loki’s face has gone blotchy and blank.

Thor’s has gotten sharper and paler.

“Get out,” Loki repeats, weakly.

“Have you got a problem with me liking guys?” Thor asks.

“No,” Loki says, forgetting himself and looking Thor in the eye again. Thor nods once, very slowly.

For Loki, it feels like vivisection. Thor can see straight past his pupils, through the optic nerve, and into his brain. And it’s a bit like looking into a mirror. His own blue eyes everywhere. The way he pushes his hair off his face and it slowly glides back down until he carefully twists it and tucks it behind his ears, which makes them stick out, which should look silly but is instead elfin and charming. The unexpected depth of his voice, dark and new and hopelessly filthy whenever he whispers. The way the sound makes the inside of Loki’s ribcage feel like honey is slowly flowing over it. The long slim fingers Loki has imagined having everywhere. The red mouth he wants to write his name on.

Loki’s left hand is unconsciously holding his stomach, trying to calm the cramps and bile that are twisting through it.

“You’re jealous,” Thor says, and it isn’t a question.

“Yes, thank you,” Loki says, with a brittle smile while his tears spill over. “My vocabulary is terribly limited. I’m so pleased to learn there’s a word for it. You’re too-

“Stop it,” Thor says, softly.

Loki’s jaw flexes and his nostrils flare.

“Come here,” Thor says, as he turns out into the hall and walks to his own room.

Loki follows, watching Thor’s hair sway over his shoulder blades. Thor opens his laptop and pulls up Steve’s blog, then passes it to his brother. Loki scrolls through hundreds of figure drawings. Each post lists the dimensions, the medium, the date finished, and the total time taken. Some are thirty second sketches in fluid swipes of vine charcoal. Some are longer studies in conté crayon with a clear light source and a lot of simplification. Some are full-value pencil drawings that took at least fifteen hours. All of them are unmistakably of Thor. The way the chest blossoms out below the arms. The long back. The pale hair so often put up in a messy bun. The heavy shoulders. And the double chin that Steve never tries to flatter into anything else. Loki would know him anywhere. There are also paintings, all of them of Bucky Barnes. Quick ones in watercolor, and longer oil portraits that took at least twenty-five hours. Loki nods, returns the laptop, goes back to his own room, locks the door, then pulls Steve’s blog up on his computer and opens the full versions of the all the drawings of Thor.

Loki won’t meet Thor’s eyes at dinner. Their parents don’t seem to notice. Loki does speak to his brother, but keeps his eyes on his plate, or just over Thor’s shoulder, or somewhere off to his side. Thor isn’t too bothered by it. It isn’t as though there’s anything either of them could say to each other about it at the dinner table.

When Thor comes home from school the next day, Steve isn’t with him. Loki is sitting at the kitchen table putting cream cheese and raspberry preserves on Ritz crackers and eating them in one bite, swiftly and rhythmically working his way through the sleeve.

Thor shrugs off his jacket, toes off his boots, washes his hands, and stands beside Loki, holding out his palm.

“You’re like a dog,” Loki says, coating a cracker and setting it in Thor’s hand. “Where’s Steve?”

“I took him to Bucky’s.”

“Taking the day off from lifting and life-drawing?”

“No,” Thor says, pulling out a chair and sitting down, then cupping his hand for another cracker. “If he goes to Bucky’s now, they’ll have the house to themselves, and then we can do homework and drawings and exercise later while everyone’s parents are home.”

Loki hums. When the crackers are gone, he goes up to his room to do his homework. He hears the microwave humming as Thor fixes himself something more substantial than crackers followed by the regular ringing of a fork against stoneware.

Loki is reading when Thor leans in his bedroom door. Loki doesn’t say anything, so Thor comes in and sits beside him on the bed.

“Is this what you want to do all afternoon?”

“Yeah,” Loki nods, carefully keeping his face expressionless.

Thor doesn’t move, and eventually Loki’s curiosity gets the better of him and he looks up and his mask cracks into the dumbfounded default he normally wears when his brother doesn’t know he’s looking at him. Half fear, half joy, all disbelief.

“Okay,” Thor says, and his delivery lets Loki hear the “It’s” that was meant to precede the word.

Thor heads to his own room to do his homework. He doesn’t close Loki’s door when he goes and he doesn’t shut his own either.

Loki can see the light from his brother’s bedroom brightening the hallway. He wonders what would have happened if he hadn’t lied. If he’d told the truth, whatever that is. Or if he’d only had the sense not to say anything at all. A shrug would have been perfect. Thor could have done whatever he wanted with him. It.

Thor’s socks are on the floor near-ish the hamper when Loki looks in his door. Thor hates wearing socks. Loki loves them, largely out of necessity, as his feet are always cold. Thor is on his back in bed, reading, with his book standing on his chest. His chins have been quadrupled by the angle of his head, propped up by two pillows.

When Thor sees Loki in the doorway he shuts his book and bends over the edge of the bed to let it thud to the floor, then lies back down and scoots toward the far edge of the mattress until his shoulder thumps the wall. He waits with his hands folded over his belly and after a moment, the little vacuum he made pulls Loki in and then their upper arms are pressing together pleasantly and each brother can hear and feel the other breathing.

The light in the room is all from the windows. That soothing diffuse grey of February. Dim but constant from dawn until dusk. Quiet and soft. Like the side of Thor that few have seen. Tired in his room on weekends, drawing the blinds on sunny Saturdays and Sundays, but not shutting his door, wanting to hear the small sounds of his family moving through the house. At the grave in the garden, still sobbing about the dog though she’s been dead three years. Sleepwalking out into the rain on warm summer nights and lying down on the lawn. Listening to Chet Baker, Billie Holiday, and Nina Simone at three in the morning, their voices drifting out his window and rounding the corner into Loki’s room.

“How long?” Thor asks, and the sound of his voice makes Loki’s lungs take in more air, which gives Loki two extra seconds of exhaling before he needs to begin his answer.

“Since I can remember.”

“Have I been awful about it?”

“No,” Loki sighs, shaking his head. “Just oblivious.”

“Sorry.”

Loki dismisses Thor’s apology with a little shake of his head.

“You haven’t really been around to notice,” Loki shrugs. “And it’s not like I’ve tried to be obvious about it.”

“I know,” Thor sighs. “Sorry. I barely see you.”

“Do you like posing for him?”

“I… Yeah, I do. It’s the only thing I get to do on weekdays that actually feels like an accomplishment. Homework and football don’t really go anywhere; they’re like running in circles. But with the posing he gets practice, and pieces for his portfolio, and peace and quiet, and privacy, and all I have to do is hold still.”

“He’s twice as fast as he was when he started,” Loki notes, and Thor nods.

“Twice as accurate, too. It makes him so happy.”

Loki feels Thor’s fingers close around his own where his hand rests on the bed below their hips. They lie still, breathing, blinking, and exchanging tiny pressures with their hands, sometimes brushing their thumbs over each other’s knuckles.

Loki begins to worry that his brother will fall asleep, but then Thor shifts. Thor raises their joined hands and drapes Loki’s right forearm across his chest while he loops his own arm over Loki’s head. Loki lifts his head up and Thor settles his bicep under his neck. Their hands are still joined, held over Loki’s left shoulder. Thor curls onto his side and throws his right leg across Loki’s thighs while he snakes his right arm around Loki’s middle.

Loki can feel Thor’s fingers gently kneading his waist. Thor’s breath brushes warm and soft against the side of his neck for several minutes, then the bed shifts again slightly as Thor cranes his neck and presses a kiss on Loki’s cheek. Loki turns his head to stare at Thor’s face, which is relaxed and open and smiling faintly. Loki wonders whether you count that as a first kiss, because Thor has kissed him on the cheek before and it was nice but not quite like this and that was back when Thor didn’t know, but now he knows, so does it mean something different to Thor, or is it merely sympathy or apology or-

Thor smiles wider and kisses him on the mouth.

And Loki remembers it’s only a first kiss if it’s on the lips because then it’s simultaneous, you’re both kissing each other, and he reminds himself to move his lips, and he puckers them back against his brother’s. It makes Thor hum, which makes their lips buzz, which tickles, which makes them giggle and twitch. Thor’s blue eyes nearly shut with his smile and Loki’s green ones go bright with his grin. Thor urges Loki closer with his fingers until Loki rolls onto his side so that they’re lying face to face with Thor’s right knee hooked behind Loki’s left. Their narrow hips are bent back slightly, held at a shy distance, as neither brother wants to worry about his hair-trigger interrupting their kisses. They only want to think about soft lips and the tiny wet sounds they make. About air warmed by lungs gusting down across their kisses at a panted pace. About the dark welcoming doorways their eyes have become, letting them walk back and forth into each other, the fit at once spacious and snug.

In the morning, Loki rides to school with Thor and they hold hands for the ten minutes they have together in the car before they pick up Steve. Loki watches as Steve trots down his front steps with his tackle box full of turpentine and tubes of paint and he silently thanks Steve for dropping the thing on Thor’s foot. It had bruised. Badly. And must have hurt like hell. When Loki saw it, he couldn’t fathom how Thor hadn’t screamed. Thor wore socks for two weeks to hide it from Steve and only let himself limp when Steve wasn’t looking.

Before the first bell, the brothers let their shoulders brush together more than necessary as they stand side by side at their lockers. When they cross paths in the halls between classes they find each other's eyes and hold onto them, letting their heads swivel on their necks the way owls would, and saying their farewells with smirks and winks.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> please don't comment or repost.


End file.
